~ embellishments for digital scrapbooking and more

Category Archives: Scrapbooking

I decided to simplify my scrapbooking this year and make all my pages based on a 12-element grid. The instructions will explain how to make two different grids – one with portrait photos (vertical) and one with landscape photos (horizontal). Once you create the 12 elements on your page (choose whichever one will suit your needs better), you can stretch out the elements to also suit your needs.

Group the 12 elements together and center the grouping on the page. Ungroup.

To change a shape into a photo: Right click on each element, Fill, Convert to photo drop unless you want to decorate the element and/or add a text box for journaling or a title.

Resize the photo drops as needed. As you stretch the elements (grab and drag the little boxes around the perimeter), green lines will appear (if you have the Artisan 5.0) and you will easily see when one photo has taken up the spaces for 4 photos or however many you want to stretch it to. Delete the photos that have been covered and are no longer needed.

Add a background, decorate, journal as usual.

Once the two pages have been created with 12 blocks each, copy them and edit as needed.

The configurations are many! Here are a few that I plan to use:

I’ve added rounded corners, a 3-D edge and a light shadow to look more like chipboard but that’s all optional. (It was somewhat distressing to discover that rounding the corners isn’t as easy as choosing the same amount for each element – the amount of rounding is relative to the overall size of the element.)

Yes, I took a picture of the plate but I knew that was an easy title!

Please let me know if you try this method and how it works for you. Of course, I will want to know if something is unclear or incorrect.

I got the idea from Pinterest (of course) to give a Starbucks gift card in a Starbucks cup so that’s exactly what I’m going to give my hairstylist for Christmas. Making a sleeve using Artisan and printing it on brown cardstock adds the finishing touch. I lined the cup with wrinkled brown paper to look like coffee and added cotton balls to look like whipped cream. If you mention to the Starbucks employee, when purchasing a gift card, that you would like a cup and straw for packaging, they are not likely to say no!

Download this template and make the finished size 10.75″ x 3″ (Right Click, Properties). Add your decoration in the middle, group the elements together (Arrange tab), and, if necessary, Rotate 90 Degrees Clockwise (Arrange tab) so it will fit on standard printer paper. To center it on the page: Home, Align, Center on Page. Then Save, Print (File tab), Print, Current Page, Print. The Christmas tree is from the Digital Variety Kit (I reduced the opacity) and the font for Jenny is Xiomara.

If you want to save it as a shape so you can add a border and/or easily find it to use again, you will have to go through a few more steps. Make the sleeve 10.75″ x 3″. Flatten (Arrange tab). Using the Wand (Cut tab), cut away the background. Click on Outliner (Insert tab), Right Click, Shape, Save As… Give it a name and Save.

Sometimes, when typing a word using the Text Shape feature (which includes the option of creating a border around each letter), the borders overlap and it doesn’t look quite right. An easy solution is to type the word, a space and type the individual letter(s) that are overlapping.

Zoom in to about 200%, insert a vertical line on one side of the original offending letter and a horizontal line on the top or bottom of the letter. Cut the extra letters away from the original word (Cut, Straight, Straight Edge, OK to flatten, move line between word and extra letter, Keep Both Areas, Cut) and then move the individual letter on top of the word using the alignment markings. Flatten it all together and it will look all cleaned up!

When working on pages for a book, the binding throws the center off from the left page to the right page. To ensure that your elements are properly centered on each page, create a brightly colored bar that is 11.436″ by .5″ (for a 12 x 12 page) and place it at the top of the page, out of the way. Line it up with the edges of the page excluding the binding.Now, for the fussy detailed scrapbookers like me, all the elements can be centered with the bar. If the page is already created and all the elements need to be moved, group them all together (except for the temporary bar and the background) and then line up the grouped elements with the bar using the alignment tool (Arrange tab).

Creative Memories/Panstoria/Forever… whatever it’s called now… keeps sending updates. Updates are good because the features improve but the problem is, if you don’t keep up with the updates, eventually you will not be able to print your albums. In case you ever need to reprint an album, the easiest way to recreate it would be to fill the pages with full page photos (jpg files). That’s why creating JPG files is better than saving the pages in whichever software you were using when the album was created.

Select the Windows Explorer icon (drawing of 3 file folders) on your desktop. Plug in your back-up drive and on it, create a folder called “Digital Albums as Photos”. Let’s say you just made an album called “2014 Anniversary Trip to Cancun.” In the “Digital Albums as Photos” folder, make a sub-folder entitled “2014 Trip to Cancun” (right click, New, Folder). Minimize the window.

Open the software used to create this album and then open the project file.

Go back to Windows Explorer, open the file “2014 Trip…” select Change your View/More Options in the upper right corner and then select Extra Large Icons. Review each page and see if it looks okay. (It’s much faster to click through these image files than go through the pages on the scrapbooking software.) If there is anything you want to change, jot down the page number, go back to the album, make the changes and then save that page as follows: File, Save As, Export current page, Browse: select folder, Save As Type: JPG, double click on the existing page, Replace: Yes, Trim Option: Full page (default), Resolution: Best (default), Image Quality: High (default), OK.

Google offers unlimited photo storage. My next big project is to upload all of these photos of album pages that I’m saving.

To save photos on Google Photo:

From Gmail, click Google Apps (9 little squares in the upper right corner) and select Photos. If you are setting up an account, click on the Main Menu (3 little horizontal lines in the upper left corner) and then select Settings and choose High Quality (free unlimited storage).
To start uploading, select Upload Photos. Browse to the folder where the jpg files are, select them (Control A to select all) and then click Open.

When the files are uploaded, the following message will appear.

Select Create Album, type the name of the album, Enter, select left arrow to return to the main menu.

To download the pictures to recreate an album: At the main menu select the album, click on More Options, Download All. The album will be in your Downloads folder which can be viewed in Windows Explorer. Double click on the folder for the album. Select a location for the download (little blue box for more options), then OK.

If you are recreating an album then simply fill each page with a completed page photo.

Bonus Tip: Take a screen shot of your pages in the album and save this photo with the album page photos. It will make it a lot easier to put the pages in order, should the need arise.

Sometimes Text Wrapping just doesn’t seem to do exactly what I want it to. Basically, the text box has to be below the element around which it is wrapped on the Elements list on the left side of the screen. Select both the text box and the element, then select the Format tab, Text Wrapping, Element Shape (or Bounding Box if you prefer but that’s too boxy and defeats the whole purpose, in my opinion), the amount of space between the two elements, OK.

However, sometimes the element does not have nice smooth edges (my dot frame) and this will make the text edge choppy. To trick the system, make a shape with smooth edges. Select the new shape and the text and set up the text wrapping.

When you’re positive that it’s written exactly the way you want it, flatten the text box (you will not be able to make any changes after flattening so you may want to make a copy and set it off to the side first) and then delete the temporary shape.

Create a blue rectangle that is 5″ x 7″, and a pink one that is 4″ x 6″. Align them horizontally and vertically and then flatten. Using the wand, delete the pink rectangle. This is now the template.

Insert a pink rectangle that is 1/2″ x 7″. Align it with the left side of the template.

Insert a yellow right triangle and make it 1/2″ square. Duplicate it and align both as shown. Flatten the triangles to the pink strip. Using the wand, cut the triangles away. Change the color and surface texture of the pink strip to suit your layout. This example is glittery gold. The color is from the skin color options and then using the HSB (Hue/Saturation/Brightness) option, I made it a bit more goldish. I changed the surface to Block and made the contrast 10 to make it look glittery.Make a copy of the left side frame piece and align it with the original piece. Edit the top piece, using the image filter, to soften the edge to 25. Select the bottom piece and change the color to the darkest color that is in this image. You can use the HSB option to make it a little bit darker so it will contrast with the top piece. Now the piece has a little bit of a dark frame around the edges. Flatten the two gold pieces together. (This method of framing an element is explained here.)

Copy the left side piece and flip the second piece horizontally and align it with the right side of the blue template. Duplicate it again, rotate it 90° and align it with the top, left corner of the blue frame.Select the top piece, click Cut & Fill, straight, blended edge, and make a fairly wide blended cut in the middle of this top, horizontal piece. Select Keep Both Pieces before selecting Cut. Align the left piece on the left side of the blue frame and the right piece on the right side of the blue frame. Flatten the two pieces together to form the horizontal 5” part of the frame. Duplicate this new piece, flip it and align it at the bottom of the blue template.

Select the blue frame template and make it the same color as the edge of the frame (should be the most recent color used). Flatten all five pieces together. Using the image filter, add a 3-D edge. The one shown here is: amount – 80, softness – 0, width – 35.

Click on format, shadow, and select the center option of heavy shadows. Flatten. Add shadowing to match the other elements on the page. Insert a 4.5″ x 6.5″ photo behind your custom frame.Of course, you can make your frame the size you want. A square frame would be a bit easier to make. Please let me know if you try this and then show me the final outcome!

Cramming a year’s worth of photos into 100 pages (although I have to admit that the number of pages is going down as my children get older) requires layouts that often have quite a few photos. In fact, if I’m scraplifting (using someone else’s layout idea), I’ll often replace the size and location of one of their photos with four or more of mine but there’s a bit of a challenge in making it all look just right.

Each photo needs to have dimensions that are divisible by 1/8″ (right click the photo, Properties, and adjust the measurements to end with .000 or .125 or .250 or .375 or .500 or .625 or .750 or .875) so you can use the Grid Snap option (View, Guides, Grid, Select Show Lines, Select Snap to Grid, Select a color that will show up well, Select 1/8″ for Grid Spacing, OK). Zoom in and move the photos to be right up against each other. If you like photos and elements to line up nicely on your pages anyway, then you will use this tool a lot!

Th problem with placing photos right next to each other and then matting them (Format Photo, Select Mat, choose from the various options), so you can see the individual photos, is that the outside border is half the size of the inside borders. This is just wrong!Here’s an easy fix: First, make the mats different colors (Format Photo, Select Mat, Mat Fill).

Second, zoom in and, using the arrow keys, move the photos so that the interior frames completely overlap each other.

In this example, move the green mat to line up exactly under the blue mat and then use the Align tool to make the purple mat line up with the green one. Use the arrows to move the red mat up under the blue mat and then use the Align tool again to move the purple mat up.

Third, change the mats so they all have the same color. That looks sooo much better!